Software Licensing - Overview

Various entities at Tufts University, such as the support organizations, the Software Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program, periodically coordinate software license purchases designed to benefit the University community. The criteria motivating these purchases can be any of the following:

• The software is or will be adopted as a University-wide standard.
• The software is integral to the University's technology infrastructure.
• The software is to be implemented as part of a University-wide initiative.
• The software acquisition will enable Tufts to realize economies of scale.

Over the past several years, a number of software products have been made available to Tufts faculty, staff and, in certain instances, students as a result of these initiatives. Please select a link from the sidebar to learn more about the individual applications. Information about the Software Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program is provided below.


Software Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program

The Software Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program at Tufts University has two fundamental goals. The first is to reduce costs associated with the university's purchase and use of software. The second is to identify software products that have a broad install base or the potential for one and facilitate making those products more readily accessible to the university community.

The program's goals are accomplished through the following activities:

• Depending on the availability of funds, the program provides or finds centralized funding or partial subsidies to cover software licensing or maintenance costs.
  
• Working with software coordinators on all three campuses, coordination of volume software purchases to obtain better discounting.

Software Products

Since its inception, a range of software products have been acquired under the Software Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program. Products, vendors or, in some cases, group discounts, which have been acquired through the program and which are currently available are listed below.

• ESRI's GIS software
• Microsoft Campus Agreement
• Microsoft Select Agreement
• Oracle Database software
• SecureCRT
• SPSS (Base, Advanced and Regression modules)
• SAS
• Adobe Software
• STATA
• Matlab

Periodically, the Site Licensing and Volume Discount Program will run a University-wide volume purchase. In general, a volume purchase is initiated once broad interest is expressed. Some of the purchases completed in the recent past have included Endnote and Panther.

Since IT Support is decentralized at Tufts, University-wide software purchases are facilitated by Campus Coordinators. If you have questions about the availability of software licenses or support or are interested in a particular software product, contact your Campus Coordinator or the Site License Administrator (see sidebar above) for assistance.